Dennis Potter’s death in 1994 was mourned in some quarters as the passing of Britain’s greatest ever television writer. But the searing inventiveness of Brimstone and Treacle, Pennies from Heaven or The Singing Detective was not universally admired.

An appeals court has cleared a South African doctor of manslaughter over the death more than a decade ago of a three-year-old leukaemia patient – a case that caused a diplomatic rift between the two countries.

The civil trial over the death of Michael Jackson is set to get formally underway next week after jury selection was completed in the $40 billion case that pits the pop star's mother against concert promoters AEG Live.